Student News

Winner of the 2016 Div. 20 Student Poster Award

We are pleased to announce the winner of the APA Div. 20 Student Poster Award for APA 2016: Jennifer Bellingtier. Her poster title was “Attitudes toward Own Aging Moderate the Impact of Daily Stressors on Emotion.”

Jennifer started work on her PhD in lifespan development at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 2014. Prior to coming to NCSU, she completed her BA at the University of Southern California and her MA in social psychology at the University of Northern Iowa. She is currently a member of the Daily Well-Being in Adulthood Lab under the supervision of Shevaun Neupert, PhD. Her research interests focus on individual's attitudes, beliefs and feelings about their own aging, as well as how those beliefs develop and impact well-being.

Her poster presentation examined the influence of aging attitudes on older adults' reactivity to daily stressors. Findings indicated that individuals possessing more negative views of aging tend to have higher levels of negative affect on days with stressors, whereas those with more positive views tend to maintain low levels of negative affect on days with and without stressors. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Her research has been featured by Time Magazine, CBS and Fox News. She is a student member of the Gerontological Society of America, the American Psychological Association and the Southern Gerontological Society. She plans to graduate in 2017-18 and pursue postdoctoral opportunities.